Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 6. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1990)

NÓVÁK LÁSZLÓ: Egy uradalmi majorság és építményei 1842-ben

László Novak A MANOR* AND ITS BUILDINGS ON AN ESTATE IN 1842 The author publishes the description of the buildings in the centre of a farmstead belonging to a large estate and situated in the vast peripheral area (a far-away „puszta") of the town of Nagykőrös, as they were in 1842. There were several dwelling houses and various farm buildings. The simplest dwelling was a hovel sunk into the ground. The most prestigious buildings were the home of the tenant and that of the steward. They had mud walls and planked ceilings and were topped by a rafter roof covered with reed and shingles. The rooms were heated by tile stoves. Some of the labourers' dwellings had timber chimney, and the ceiling of reed was supported by the main beam. One of the houses had two ovens: one was heated form the kitchen and the body of the other protruded from the house. Among the outbuildings there were stables for oxen and for horses, sheep-pens, granaries, pigsties and henhouses. As regards their construction, the stables for oxen and horses resembled the more prestigious houses. The sheep-pens, lean-tos („szárnyékok"), pigsties and henhouses, as simpler structures, retained many archaic techniques (reed-wall daubed with mud, wall of „bricks" cut of cattle dung, purlin roofs, whose rafters rested against the ridge-pole wich was supported by Y-shaped uprights, and thatched by weeds or rushes or covered by earth, etc.). Other buildings, indispensable for the operation of the manor, like the black-smith shop, and the dry-mill could also be found on the site. Their construction, either in respect of the walls or of the trussings differed even less from that of the dwelling houses. In the manor there were more than one well. These were all dug wells and their mouth was fenced by curbs made of logs. Water was drawn in a bucket dangling from the end of the sweep pole lying in the trough of the Y-shaped upright. Hewn oak watering troughs of considerable sizes were placed by the side of each well. *manors or manorial farms („majorságok" in Hungarian) were farms managed by the landlord or his steward, where serfs worked on their days of socage.